Highlights in Environmental Sciences 2018

Looking back at the past year to inspire the future: Springer's Editorial Team share a selection of the top downloaded books & articles in 2018, together with their outlook on 2019.

Senior Editor, Dr. Johanna Schwarz on 2018

​​​​​​​Happy New Year from the Environmental Group at Springer!

Although it is a bit odd to start talking about the weather in what is supposed to become an editorial and not small talk, it is actually quite appropriate to do so – after a year of historical weather records. Germany, where I am based, has seen its hottest year since records began 130 years ago – and the fourth driest of all. A number of countries or particular cities in the Northern Hemisphere have reached all-time highs in 2018. For example, Taiwan and the cities of Tbilisi, Yerevan, and Los Angeles, have each reached hottest temperatures ever measured. And on a larger scale, the city of Ouargla in Algeria has reached the all-time hottest temperature measured on the African continent. The southern hemisphere has seen a heatwave in Australia, and the hottest climatological summer on record in New Zealand. All in all, 2018 was a year of weather extremes - which underline global warming nevertheless.

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Looking at my local region in the southwest of Germany, the extremely hot and dry weather resulted quite positively on fruit harvests; the 2018 wine is expected to be outstanding, and my bees could fly out to collect nectar almost every day this summer, without fearing wet weather. But these local positive effects came at a high cost at local (and global) level: droughts, increased desertification, water scarcity.

A particularly hotly debated topic last year was the loss of insects. While people around the world might welcome fewer mosquitoes (or wasps) the issue is indeed a crucial one. Not only does it result in a rather big loss of biodiversity (statistics vary between 45 and 80% of biomass decrease over the last few decades in terms of insects, in certain regions), but it will also affect availability of food – thinking pollination of fruit trees, for example, which heavily rely on insects such as bees, bumblebees, and flies. Whether a future ban of glyphosate will help in this regard is still under debate – but it is definitely a ray of hope in many regards concerning the environment and society.

With more than 150k downloads clearly one of the most successful books in 2018 was Observing the Volcano World by Carina Fearnly et al. This open-access pool of knowledge with an impressive length of over 700 pages provides a platform for understanding how volcano crisis are managed in practice and is of utmost importance, especially looking at recent events such as the eruptions of Mount Etna on Sicily or Anak Krakatau, followed by a Tsunami on Java’s west coast on December 22nd causing a death toll of almost 400. One of the most downloaded articles in 2018 focused on better understanding another kind of geological hazards: landslides triggered by high precipitation.

Last but not least I would like to invite you to keep an eye on our latest publishing outlets such as the book series on Advances in Critical Zone Science, aiming at interdisciplinary studies of the natural processes that shape the critical zone and determine its evolution and the effects of natural and human-induced change, the journal Safety in Extreme Environments, an interdisciplinary platform for safety related aspects of human activity in extreme environments, characterized by high or excessive exposure to cold, heat, pressure, vacuum, voltage, corrosive chemicals, particle and electromagnetic radiation, shock, moisture or contamination, and the International Journal of Energy and Water Resources, focusing on environmental aspects linked to the fields of (new) energies, and availability and protection of water resources worldwide. We welcome your book proposals and article submissions!